“They’re still looking. The blast really shattered the building. It’s going to take days for them to dig through it all. They’ve found some body parts that they’re trying to identify. Very sad.”
“Did you know Marty was working with Chambord?”
“Actually, no. Not until I read it in the paper.” Kerns returned behind his desk and waved Smith to an aged armchair in the cluttered office. “Just chuck those files onto the floor.”
Smith nodded, moved the pile of folders, and sat.
Kerns continued, “I said I never met Zellerbach, right? But it’d be more accurate to say I never even heard he was here. Fie had no official appointment to the staff, and I never saw his name listed as being on loan or visiting. I’d have known about that. It must’ve been some private arrangement with Chambord.” Kerns paused. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I was concerned about Emile. This last year, he was acting strange.”
Smith came alert. “Chambord was acting strange? In what way?”
“Wellhellip;” Kerns pondered, then leaned forward like a conspirator, his hands clasped in from of him, resting on his papers. “He used to be a happy guy, you know what I mean? Convivial, outgoing, one of the boys, if you like, for all his seniority and fame. A hard worker who didn’t seem to take his work all that seriously, despite its importance. A very level head. Oh, eccentric enough, like most of us, but in a different way from last year. He had the right attitudehis ego was never oversized. In fact, once when a dozen or so of us got together for drinks, he said, ‘The universe will go on fine without us. There’s always someone else to do the work.’ ”
“Self-effacing, and in many ways true. And it was after that he changed?”
“Yes. It was almost as if he vanished. In the corridors, at meetings, in the cafeacute;s, at bull sessions, staff parties, all that. And it happened just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “He seemed to cut us all off, sharp as a slice with a knife. He’d disappeared, as far as most of us were concerned.”
“Was this a year ago, about the same time he quit entering his progress data into the computer?”
Kerns was astonished. “I hadn’t heard that. Damn, does that mean we have no idea what he accomplished over the last twelve months?”
“That’s what it means. You know what he was working on?”
“Of course, everyone knew. A molecular computer. I heard he was making big strides, too. That he might even get there first, in under ten years. It was no secret, sohellip;”
“So?”
Kerns leaned back. “So why the secretiveness? That was what was so different about him. Secretive, withdrawn, distracted, avoiding his colleagues. Come to work, go home, return to work, nothing else. Sometimes he was here for days in a row. I heard he even had a good bed put in there. We just wrote it off to a hot line of research.”
Smith did not want to appear too interested in Chambord, or his notes, or the DNA computer. He was in Paris for Marty, after all. Nothing more, as far as Kerns or anyone else was concerned. “He wouldn’t be the first to be so wrapped up in his work. A scientist who doesn’t feel that compelled doesn’t belong in research.” He paused and asked casually, “So what’s your theory?”
Mike chuckled. “In my wildest moments, stolen research. Spies. Industrial espionage, maybe. Some kind of cloak-and-dagger.”
“Did something happen to make you think that?”
“Well, there’s always the issue of the Nobel Prize. Whoever creates the first molecular computer will be a shoo-in. Of course, that means not just money but prestigethe Mount Olympus of prestige. No one at the Pasteur would turn it down. Probably no one in the world. Under those conditions, any of us might get a little nervous and clandestine, protecting our work until we were ready to go public.”
“Good point.” But stealing was one thing, mass murder, which the bombing had caused, was quite another. “There must’ve been something else, though, to make you think Chambord was worried about his work being stolen. Something unusual, maybe even suspicious, that triggered the idea.”
“Now that you mention ithellip;I wondered sometimes about a few of the people I spotted Chambord with once or twice outside the Pasteur. Also about a car that picked him up here some nights.”
Smith allowed only a fraction of his interest to show on his face. “What kind of people?”
“Oh, ordinary enough. French, well dressed. They were always in civvies, or I might’ve said they were military. But I guess if Chambord was making progress on his DNA computer, that’d make sense. The military would want to keep tabs on everything he was doing, if he’d let them.”
“Natural enough. What about the car? Do you remember the year and make?”
“Citron, recent. Don’t know the exact year. It was big and black. I’d see it when I was working late. I’d be heading for mine, and a few times it’d drive up. The rear door would swing open, Chambord would duck and climb inhe was very tall, you knowand it’d drive off. It was odd, because he had his own little Renault. I mean, I’d spot the Renault parked in the lot after the big car drove off.”
“You never saw who was with him in the Citron?”
“Never. But at the time, I was tired and was thinking about getting home.”
“Did the Citron bring him back?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Smith thought it over. “Thanks, Mike. I can see you’re busy, and I don’t want to take any more of your time. I’m just looking into Marty’s activities here in Paris, to get an assessment of his health before the bombing. Sorry to get so far off track with Chambord. Marty’s got Asperger’s Syndrome, and he’s usually fine, but since I haven’t talked to him in a while, I just want to make sure. What can you tell me about Chambord’s family? They might know more about Marty.”
“Emile was a widower. Wife died about seven years ago. I wasn’t here then, but I heard it hit him hard. He buried himself in work then, too, was aloof for a while, I’m told. He has one child, a grown-up daughter.”
“You have her address?”
Kerns turned to his computer and soon provided it. He cocked his head at Smith. “Her name’s Theacute;regrave;se Chambord. I gather she’s a successful actress, stage mostly, but a few French flicks. A stunner, from what I’ve heard.”
“Thanks, Mike. I’ll tell you how things go with Marty.”
“You do that. And we’ve got to have a drink together at least, before you go home. With luck, Marty, too.”
“Good idea. I’d like that.” He stood up and left.
Once outside, Smith gazed across the big campus toward the smoke, blowing thin against the clouds. He shook his head and turned away, heading back to the street, his mind on Marty. Using his cell phone, he called the Pompidou Hospital and talked to the ICU head nurse, who reported that Marty remained stable, fortunately still showing an occasional sign that he might wake up. It was not a lot, but Smith held close the hope that his longtime friend would pull through.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Me?” He remembered the blow to his head when he fell. Now it all seemed a long time ago and, compared to the devastation at the Pasteur, unimportant. “I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.”
As he hung up, he reemerged onto the rue du Docteur Roux and considered what he had learned from Mike Kerns: For the past year, Emile Chambord had acted like a man in a hurry, like someone with a secret. And he had been seen with well-dressed men who could have been military types out of uniform.
Smith was mulling that when he had a feeling he was being watched. Call it what you willtraining, experience, a sixth sense, a subliminal impression of an image, paranoia, or even parapsychologyhellip;. But there was that tingle on the back of his neck, the slight shrinking of the skin.
They were out there, the eyes observing him. It had begun the instant he had stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Chapter Six
Captain Darius Bonnard could almost smell the camels, the dates rotting in the sun, the goat-fat stink of couscous, and even the rank but miraculous odor of stagnant water. He had changed out of his captain’s uniform and was now wearing a civilian suit, lightweight but still too heavy for the apartment where he had just arrived. He was already sweating under his blue pin-striped shirt.
He gazed around. The place looked like the inside of every bedouin tent in which he had sat miserable and cross-legged from the Sahara to all the godforsaken desert outposts of the former empire where he had served in his time. Moroccan rugs covered every window and lay two deep in a cushion on the floor. Algerian, Moroccan, and Berber hangings and artifacts decorated the walls, and the leather and wood furniture was low and hard.